Trial continues in 2017 shooting

CLOVIS - The trial continues this week for a man arrested last year in the 2017 shooting death of a man at the Clovis Apartments.

Darryl Turner II, 31, is charged with second-degree murder for the Sept. 5, 2017, killing of David McDonald. A jury consisting of four women and 10 men was selected Monday morning and heard opening arguments that afternoon followed by testimony from three Clovis Police Department officers.

"People were doing things they ought not to have been doing," Chief Deputy District Attorney Brian Stover said of the alcohol and drug consumption that preceded the incident almost 18 months past. "But they didn't do anything that warranted being gunned down."

In his opening statements, Stover described a sequence of events to be detailed in state testimony the following days: a gathering just before 1 a.m. in a unit of the apartment complex, a muzzle flash and scattering caught on surveillance footage, a quick lift from the scene in a Chevy Malibu.

All of that happened before police were dispatched to a report of shots fired, with CPD Officer Moe Parker first on scene shortly before 2 a.m. There he found McDonald, known to many as "Theo," in the grass near the west side of the apartments and moaning in pain. That much was seen on lapel footage played Monday in court, as well as a photograph of the entry wound from a single bullet that traversed McDonald's shoulder, chest, lung, heart and spine. Within hours of the shooting he was pronounced dead in the emergency room of Plains Regional Medical Center.

At the prosecutor's request, CPD Det. Dale Rice removed from a sealed evidence bag the shirt McDonald wore at the time, displaying from the stand a New Orleans Saints shirt in tatters and "saturated with blood."

According to court records, Turner allegedly woke up a friend sleeping inside a nearby apartment unit and had her drive him to a relative's house across town immediately after the shooting.

"She had no idea that David McDonald was laying in the grass some 20 to 30 feet from where they were," Stover told the court. A text message later from Turner said people there were "messing" with him, he added.

Parker said attempts to locate Turner that night were unsuccessful, and days later police declared him a person of interest. He was ultimately apprehended in February 2018 in Sacramento, California, on an arrest warrant for an open count of murder. In May, he was indicted on the charge for which the maximum sentence is 15 years in prison.

Turner appeared in custody with public defender Ibukun Adepoju, who reserved her opening statement, and district defender Julie Ann Ball. The courtroom audience Monday was limited, with six people from the public on the defense side and two on the prosecutor's side of the gallery.

The trial continued Tuesday and attorneys forecasted reaching closing arguments by Thursday.